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Eastern View of Personal Identity
Ideas from Hinduism & Buddhism
Reincarnation / Cycle of Life, Death,
Rebirth
• Eastern religions’ goal: freedom from cycle of
reincarnation
• How?
– Developing oneself spiritually
– Doorways: boundless love, compassion,
sympathetic joy, equanimity (i.e. steady calmness)
– Impediments: ignorance, greedy attachment,
hatred
• All life is changing
For Tibetan Buddhists
• “bardo”
• The actual moments of change
– Life
– Dying
– Death
– Rebirth
– Dreaming
– Meditation
• Bardo the only real state: everything is
impermanent
Buddhist ideas of the mind
• Mind creates & projects images of the world
from its collection of memories & habits
– Projections usually negative
• Do not experience reality as it really is
• Recall from the Four Noble Truths:
– To avoid suffering, follow the Eightfold Path
– Structured program of morality, insight &
meditation
– Follow the dharma (teaching of Buddha)
Mind conditioned by habit
• To be ignorant of fundamental reality
• Two aspects of mind:
– Primordial enlightenment
• Pure in nature
• The only thing representing reality
– Corrupted version of enlightenment
• Thoughts & desires from ego
• Conditioned ignorance of true meaning of life 
illusions
5 types of awareness
• Intrinsic primary,  ultimate reality
• Subtle, sees colour & form free of judgment,
sees cause & effect;
– Remains detached, uninvolved, unconcerned
• Compassionate,  all sentient beings desire
happiness
– All beings held equally in immeasurable love
• Spontaneously discriminating  recognizes
potential bliss in all beings
• Accomplishing  how a being can accomplish its
need for fulfillment & its purpose
Buddhist ideas on Ego
• Ego
– A parasitical illusion
– A defence mechanism
– No basis in reality
– Continually reinvented as reality chips away at it
– Gives false sense of importance
– Barrier to enlightenment
– Uses negative emotions to ensure its survival
• Read pages 336 to 338